Day 14 in South Korea | Two weeks!

I've been in Korea for two weeks, Seoul for five days, and I haven't been hit by a car yet! I hope I can keep this up. It's pretty tricky business, crossing streets around here.

Right now, I'm making plans with friends for the weekend. Saturday should involve some Kpop-related antics, and then Sunday will hopefully involve church. I'm so excited that my social life in Korea is already turning out way better than my social life this past year in my own hometown. I hope I can keep this up as well!

See? A social activity! This was on Tuesday night.

Fried chicken is the only cure for Alien Registration frustrations.

I started off the weekend with dinner with all the 5th and 6th grade teachers from my school. The science/art teacher is leaving his job to go back to school, so it was a farewell dinner for him. But it was also a bit of a welcoming dinner for me and another new teacher.

To be honest, I had been really worried about the infamous staff dinners. From what I'd been reading about them, I was imagining a very uncomfortable, high-pressure event with a million and one opportunities to offend people by violating cultural codes. Or at the very least, a miserably boring event where everybody spoke in Korean and ignored me the whole time.

But thankfully, it wasn't like this at all! It was incredibly laid back, and I got to chat with several of the teachers. I'm loving the people at this school so far. Obviously, I'm not able to really get to know them well yet, since I don't speak Korean and most of them don't speak English, but they've all been very welcoming, and they seem to have a lot of fun with each other while they work.

Also, we had an all-staff meeting this afternoon to recognize three teachers who are retiring/leaving and to welcome me and two other new teachers. The other two are also girls, about my age. They asked us to each introduce ourselves, so I said in English how I was thankful that they've all been so nice to me this week and that I hope I can learn Korean so I can get to know them all. I hear, though, that the vice-principal translated this to something along the lines of "She says that I'm the best vice-principal and the best person in the whole school!"

Then, they had three of the younger guy teachers come up to the front to present us each with a big bouquet of flowers. It was very funny and sweet.

And yes, the flowers are now sitting in a trash can. Because this empty trash can was the only thing in my apartment big enough to hold them. Maybe, this weekend, I'll work on finding an actual vase.